


lie awake (i sleep awake)

by skvadern



Series: if we make it through the night everybody's gonna hear us [5]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Autistic Character, Canon Asexual Character, Canon-Typical Horror, Dreams and Nightmares, Established Relationship, F/M, Life-Threatening Situations, Other, Sasha James Lives, Unresolved God-Knows-What Tension, canon-typical idiocy, creepy monster...flirting????, elias is a creep, spooky tunnel dates!!!, we out here realising things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:14:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21804994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skvadern/pseuds/skvadern
Summary: “Trauma can be isolating, Jon. I do hope you’ve got someone to lean on.”Jon and Sasha's investigation into the Keays is turning up leads they never expected. Elias is hiding something. And Jon is having the strangest dreams...
Relationships: Michael/Jonathan Sims, Sasha James/Jonathan Sims, mentioned Sasha James/Michael
Series: if we make it through the night everybody's gonna hear us [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1555078
Comments: 59
Kudos: 178





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> finally some jon pov! also at this point uve basically gotta read the rest of the series, soz
> 
> title from sleep awake by mother mother

_the apple begins to spasm, pump, like a heart if a heart was not a heart, if a heart was **wrong** , pouring blood down the lab coat of the man holding it, the man who shakes and shivers because he cannot throw it away, cannot let go, because he forgot how the joints work – _

_fog tangles and clings like silk scarves, washing over her mouth and down her throat to muffle any sound, any hope of crying for help, as it ushers her to the cold, slick arms of the grave that is all that is left to her, the grave with the headstone that simply reads **gone and forgotten** – _

_in the silent hospital the thing that is **not** Sarah Baldwin advances to take her arm and slowly strip the skin away like a glove, no pain, _ _no fucking **pain** , just the slow ticklish horrific slide of her skin coming away from the muscle below, muscle that isn’t muscle, what is **wrong** – _

Jon snaps upright, gasping into the darkness.

At first he can’t work out where he is, because this is definitely not _his_ bedroom. But after a few seconds the blanket of mindless terror frays enough that he can recognise the framed posters on the wall, the tangle of clothes on an armchair, the soft warmth of the body in bed with him.

Sasha’s flat. Sasha’s bed. He’s safe here.

Carefully, trying to control his shaking, he slides out of bed and creeps to the bathroom. It’s untidy but clean, full of brightly coloured bottles, tangled headscarves spilling out of a half-open drawer. It puzzles him, how someone who keeps her desk so ordered at work can happily clutter her home, and the familiar fond confusion seeps through the horror of his nightmare, diluting it, easing the fearful haze.

Turning on the tap, he waits till it runs hot then slips his hands under the flow. Lovely warm water washes sensation over his skin, loosening the pressure in his chest until he can breathe easily again. The almost-healed wounds on his hands send little flares of pain through the warmth, grounding him further in his body, his reality

How long Jon stands at the sink, staring at the water flowing over his battered hands, he doesn’t know. He deliberately doesn’t look up to the mirror; the thought of being watched right now, even by himself, is too much to bear.

Finally, when his fingers have begun to prune, he feels strong enough to turn off the water and wipe his hands clean on the soft t-shirt he’d borrowed from Sasha to sleep in. Her flat is an even older build than his, so navigating back to bed comes with plenty of creaks. Thankfully, Sasha sleeps through those.

When he slips in beside her, Sasha groans and rolls over to face him, little strands of hair slipping free of the silk scarf she’d tied round it. He’d never seen her do that before, and it had been fascinating to watch from his perch on the bed. Best of all, Sasha had smiled when she’d caught Jon looking and hadn’t said a word about it, continuing her nightly routine without pause. So many people have found his staring uncomfortable over the years; while he understands that not everyone finds such scrutiny comfortable, no matter how natural it feels to him, being with someone who genuinely doesn’t _care_ is…refreshing.

Jon holds himself still, hovering above the mattress, but Sasha doesn’t wake up properly and settles back down with a little contented mumble. When he’s sure he’s not going to disturb her, Jon lies down again, curling on his side and studying her in the dim light filtering through the curtains.

He thinks of his plans to visit the site of Pinhole Books in the morning, Sasha’s continued search for more Gerard Keay statements; both almost certain to be useless, but they’ve spent weeks exhausting their other leads. He thinks of the soft buzzing snore Sasha makes on every third or fourth breath, the faint flickers of her eyes beneath their lids. Eventually, sleep comes, and brings no more horrors.

~~~~~

Pinhole Books is now a kebab shop.

 _Fair enough,_ Jon thinks. The place closed in 2008, and in London, a perfectly good shopfront is rarely empty for long. It’s been four years since Dominic Swain met, what, Mary Keay’s ghost? The ghost of the shop? Lord only knows. There was bound to be something else here by now.

Still, it’s a hell of a let-down.

Jon stands across the street in front of an off-licence, considering his options. He could go in, ask the proprietor if he’s got a metal-playing tattooed phantom selling demonic books out of the back. He could go home, but it’s been an hour’s journey on a cramped and stifling tube, and he’d rather like something to show for it.

The shop might not even be open. He can’t see any lights on inside. If he’d just looked it up before getting on the tube – but no. He’d needed to see this, this normal, slightly grotty takeaway sitting proud in the centre of this normal street. It’s good to know there’s places where these things don’t touch.

“Hello, Archivist.”

Or not.

He’d missed the sound of the door opening, in amongst the slow traffic and the backlit shop sign buzzing above his head. But when he turns, there it is, a sturdy-looking door painted a strange shade of yellow, and set into the wall where no door should be. And there Michael is, leaning against the brickwork beside him.

It looks human. Jeans and jumper, soft-looking blond curls , lightly tanned pale skin and cheerful round face. Its smile even looks human, even though there’s an edge to it Jon doesn’t like. But its eyes are slowly swirling, colours rising and sinking back down as they twine around the pits of its pupils.

“What do you want?” Jon demands, and immediately winces at his tone. Honestly, it’s like he wants to get stabbed.

Thankfully, Michael just laughs its little twisted laugh. “I gave you valuable currency, Archivist. Perhaps I just wanted to see how you’re spending it.”

 _Liar_ Jon thinks, but doesn’t say. He does have some sense.

“Information is currency now?”

It shrugs, the movement very nearly normal. Or maybe perfectly normal, and he’s just projecting what he knows is under the surface. “What else would I deal in?”

“Point,” Jon murmurs, turning his attention back to the kebab shop. It still looks like a kebab shop. Obviously.

Movement close to his shoulder, and Michael presses against his side. Even through clothes, the unexpected touch, especially from _it,_ makes him flinch away. It giggles, warped and mean. “You’ve been staring at that building for a while, now. Are you getting hungry, Archivist?”

There’s _something_ about that taunt, he has no idea what; as if it’s mocking him for something that should be obvious, and the fact that he has no idea what it’s on about just makes the whole thing funnier. Whatever it is probably only makes sense to Michael. “That was were Pinhole Books used to be,” he tells it, because he might as well humour the thing. It’s obviously not done annoying him.

Michael makes an exaggerated puzzled expression, and he sighs and elaborates. “Mary Keay’s bookshop. She used to deal in Leitners, before her death.”

“Leitners,” Michael repeats slowly, then blinks and giggles. “Oh, I see, yes. How did she die, then?”

“Gruesomely,” Jon sighs, and Michael’s laugh stabs at his ears.

The monster studies the kebab shop with a tilted head. “I can feel it,” it says meditatively. “An echo in the bricks. There were such things done in that building.” Its smile reminds Jon of Georgie’s when she’d read a good script or hear some excellent sound editing – an artist appreciating another’s art. It sends a shiver straight down his spine; he wants very badly to run.

“I could have told you that,” he says instead.

Flashing him a sharp smile, Michael pushes off the wall and crosses the street – the fact that it looks both ways before stepping off the pavement makes Jon’s head spin. It parks itself in front of the kebab shop, and turns to beckon him lazily.

Jon considers his options. Really, it would be better if he just left. The chance that he’ll find anything of worth to their investigation here is minimal, and Michael has proven not a little dangerous to him. It’s already threatened him several times, and he still has one of the scratches it left when it slammed him into a wall, pulling sharply whenever he raises his arms.

Michael beckons again, and even with a road between them, when it speaks he can hear it perfectly. “Don’t you want to know more, Archivist?”

Stupid, _stupid,_ this could not be more obviously a baited trap. But God help him, Jon crosses the street anyway.

Michael grins at him when he comes to stand beside it, looking through the dark windows of the kebab shop. It does appear to be closed, not unusually for nine in the morning. In the darkened glass, Jon can see his reflection.

His, and something else’s, something so warped and horrible it makes his teeth clench.

When he forces himself to focus past their reflections, he sees the interior of a perfectly normal takeaway. Nothing here,” he says, not sure if he’s talking to himself or the monster beside him.

“Nothing here _now,_ ” Michael corrects, and reaches out to touch the glass. Its finger, or maybe the finger of the mirror-Michael, carves a perfectly straight line in the glass down to the pavement – Michael does not need to bend down to do this. Then it draws another parallel line, and neatly connects the two at the top.

It’s not a door. It cannot be a door, but Michael opens it anyway.

Behind the…door, there is a dark, rickety staircase. The scent of old paper and must drifts down it, almost like the comforting old bookshops of his youth except for the faintest tinge of…something. Metallic, bitter, slightly foul.

“Pinhole Books,” Michael says, gesturing with a flourish. “Just as it was.”

Jon stares, very aware of how wide his eyes have gone. “You can time travel?”

“Does it make sense for me to be able to time travel?”

“No, of course not!” he explodes. “Time travel is – it’s impossible!”

“Then yes, I can time travel.” It grins at his flat glare, and gestures him again up the stairs that shouldn’t be there, that shouldn’t be possible.

The worst part is, he _wants_ to go up. Needs to – it could be the best lead they ever get. And who’s to say Michael can’t actually bend the laws of physics so out of place that it can create a door to the past? It’s not much more ridiculous than a living hive of supernatural worms, or books that make you walk calmly to the lair of a giant spider.

Very deliberately, Jon takes a step back.

“That’s not real,” he says firmly.

“Does it have to be?” Michael replies.

“Yes! Because if it isn’t reality, how am I meant to get any sensible information from seeing it?” He takes another step back, gaze fixed on the monster, waiting for it to lunge at him. Waiting for his legs to stop listening to him and walk him up that impossible staircase anyway.

Michael’s sighs is gusty, echoing. “Archivist, why would I do this for you if not to help?”

Jon glares at it. “I don’t know – your own amusement? To trap me in the past and eat my fear?”

“The thing is,” Michael says, leaning in a little as if sharing a secret, “you’re half-right, surprisingly. What is at the top of that stairway is not truly the past. While my relationship to linear time is, ah, _complicated_ , some things are beyond even me, in this reality at least.”

“Then what’s actually up there?” Jon asks, trying to restrain the curiosity in his voice. Evidently it doesn’t work – unsurprising, when has he ever been able to control his tone? – as the look Michael gives him is cruelly knowing.

“A shade,” it replies. “The shadow of what was once here, ground into the fabric of this place. A little difficult to navigate, perhaps, but you will find your answers there. And, of course, you’ll have me to help you.” There is nothing comforting about its smile.

The staircase, lit by a single uncovered bulb, yawns wide in front of him. Jon fancies he can hear the soft hissing whisper of voices coming from it, too indistinct to make out any words.

“Sasha is going to kill me,” he says to himself, and starts walking up it.

Michael’s twisting laughter follows him up; the sound fills Jon’s stomach with a cold pit of dread. At the very least, when he reaches the landing and looks back, the door to the street is still open.

The door in front of him is very much closed. The dark wood seems to suck in whatever meagre light is in the corridor, and the gleam of the brass somehow manages to look ominous. The sheer volume of _malice_ emanating from the door would be almost funny, if he wasn’t the idiot standing before it.

When he finally summons the strength to touch the handle, it’s as warm as flesh, and slightly damp. His skin crawls, and he aches to snatch his hand away. The whispers are louder, here, but no more comprehensible. It’s all incredibly sinister.

He opens the door anyway.

Inside is…a bookshop. Not a modern, orderly Waterstones; mismatched shelves are piled high with mismatched books, illuminated by a battered collection of lamps that seem strategically placed to leave puddles of deep shadow in every corner. For some reason, even though all the lamps appear to be electric, Jon can’t pick up the familiar buzzing they should be annoying him with. The air is thick with dust, and something sharper, coppery.

When he takes a step into the room, the floor feels…sticky under his boots. He doesn’t really want to see what he’s just stepped in, but he looks down anyway, and isn’t altogether surprised to see the dark gunk smeared at irregular intervals into the floorboards.

“Mr Swain didn’t mention _that_ ,” he mutters to himself.

A strangely muted cackle drifts out of the labyrinth of shelves, and Michael follows it. It doesn’t look quite so human anymore. “None of this is _real_ , Archivist. Some of this blood was spilt eight years ago, some decades. Some was never spilt at all.”

“Ghost blood,” Jon murmurs, and Michael’s razor-sharp smile cuts into the corners of its mouth.

“Ghost blood,” it echoes happily, and wanders off into the maze. Shaking his head, Jon follows it.

The smell of dust and blood gets stronger the deeper he walks, further and further until he’s sure that whatever place he’s in couldn’t possibly fit within the actual walls of the shop. Jon fixes his eyes on Michael’s bent back, certain that if he loses sight of it, he’ll never be able to find his way out again.

Some of the books are talking to him. He’s sure of it. Not all of them, but some. They whisper about flesh and rot, smoke and fog, endless voids and crushing weights and all the many shades of terror. Their voices worm their way into his ears and curl around his brain; he’s never fully understood what the word _seductive_ means to people until now. They want him to pick them up, bring their words to life with the electric crackle of his visual cortex and the resonance of his voice, fill himself up with them until he is nothing but a vessel for their awful majesty –

Sharp fingers curl around his wrist and bite down, and Jon comes back to himself with a gasp. The hand Michael has captured is inches from a slim volume that seems to be bound in, oh God, those are _cobwebs_. He jerks back violently, and Michael releases him, his blood staining one of its hands.

“Careful, Archivist,” it sing-songs. “Honestly, how you survived this long, I do not know.” It slants him a cruel little smile. “Someone in your position should not be quite so _open_ , it’s not _decent_.”

“I-“ Jon starts, but it’s already turning away to walk onward. He stares after it for a moment, the pulsing sting of the cuts on his wrist clearing the fog of compulsion. His blood is slickly warm where it pools in the curve of his palm.

Shaking his head viciously, he continues on after it. Wouldn’t do to get lost now.

Eventually they emerge from the narrow, twisting stacks into a clearing. The study is just as Mr Swain described it, cramped and messy, but he’s sure Mr Swain didn’t see the sheets of drying skin hung on fishhooks from the ceiling, bottoms crusted with gory remnants of flesh. Sharpie and blood twist together in a stench that makes him spin away, dry-heaving.

“More ghosts?” he chokes out, when the danger of actually vomiting has passed.

“Probably,” Michael replies distractedly, and when he turns back Jon finds it studying the sheets with a keen eye, head tilted like a curious bird of prey. It reaches out to graze a delicate finger over the edge, slicing away some of the clinging muscle to create a neat, straight line.

“Don’t _touch it!_ ” Jon snaps, and Michael grins at him, before cheerfully ignoring him to trim the other side.

“It’s not real, Archivist, remember?”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” Jon grumbles, and Michael makes a strange little noise, like a bitten-off giggle. He narrows his eyes at it, but it appears very focused on trimming the other skin sheet.

While it’s occupied, Jon walks tentatively into the study, tugging the sleeve of his jumper over his hand and using it to cover his nose and mouth. The texture isn’t ideal, but at least the familiar smell of his laundry powder helps combat the reek of gore.

There are a few wooden desks shoved up against the scant bits of wall with space for them, scattered in a thick layer of papers. Jon goes to investigate them – mostly handwritten, a mixture of chicken-scratch scrawl and neat, rounded print. “Can I take these papers from here?” he asks Michael. It shrugs, and he takes that as a yes, scooping up as much as he can and packing it carefully into his satchel. Most of it’s probably useless, but he has no desire to stay for long enough to sort through the pile.

Suddenly he draws up short, his eyes caught on a torn square of paper resting on a large, misshapen book. It takes him a moment to consciously realise what caught his attention – the handwriting. It’s cursive, very slanted but quite neat, easily legible if the letters weren’t so small. Familiar, somehow, though he can’t quite place it. He scoops up the note, careful not to touch the book beneath it, and raises it to the light.

“Gerard,” he reads aloud, “you can have the rest of it back, it’s not going to do you any more harm. I burned her pages, as requested, and tossed the ashes – somehow, I didn’t think you would want them. I hope you’ll consider my offer, now you have your freedom again. Regards, G.R.”

A noise from behind him makes him spin to face Michael, who is staring at the paper with such a twisted, inhuman rage that Jon freezes, blood running cold.

“G. R.” it repeats slowly, voice sending shivers wracking over his arms. “Gertrude. Robinson. _She_ was _here_.”

Feeling his eyes widen, Jon stares back down at the paper, written in the same hand as the notes scattered around the Archives, on random scraps of paper in statement files and post-it notes at the bottom of draws. The hand of his predecessor.

His predecessor, Gertrude Robinson, who apparently knew Gerard Keay.

“Shit,” he whispers.


	2. two

Walking back through the doors of the Institute is easier that he thought it would be. Jon had expected to have to fight his every instinct to run, but it feels…good, to cross that threshold. Like a homecoming.

His legs want to turn and walk down to the basement, to the Archives, but that’s for later. Instead he takes the stairs up to Elias’ office on the first floor. It’s situated in the nicest bit of the building, bar the library that fills the whole second floor – all wood panelling and rich carpet, tastefully lit and decorated. There’s always a hush in this corridor; Tim once described it as the collective ghost of centuries of worried employees, called in to see the boss. Jon finds it unnerving, but thankfully he’s timed his entrance so he’s only just early, and Rosie waves him straight through.

Elias greets him at the door to his office with a smile, a solicitous hand on his shoulder that he has to work hard not to pull away from.

“So, Jon,” Elias starts, when they’re seated at the antique wood desk in his office, “how are you feeling?”

Jon doesn’t quite manage to keep the bitter edge out of his smile. “I’ve been better,” he says, “but I’ve certainly been worse. And I think I’m about ready to return to work.”

Something about Elias’s regard is unsettling him. It reminds him too strongly of the _presence_ in the Archives, the one that’s followed him into his nightmares. He feels…very watched.

Elias quizzes him about his physical health, what the doctors have said about how much he can take on and what accommodation he might need, and Jon answers on autopilot. He won’t need anything special, his leg is doing much better. The rest of his wounds are unsightly, but not likely to affect his work. The main part of his attention is focused on trying to identify what exactly is bothering him so much.

It could be his paranoia, just him imagining things. A hangover from those strange and awful dreams, the ones where he helplessly stalks Naomi Herne and Melanie King and Lionel Elliot through their statements. The ones where he is stalked in turn, by something vast and _seeing_.

They don’t come often, those ones, but for some reason they disturb him far more than every other bad dream he has. Hell, they’re even worse than the Mr Spider nightmare.

His attention snaps back to Elias, when the man asks about, of all things, his social life. “Are there people you can talk to, Jon? People you can rely on?”

“Excuse me?” Jon asks; tone too harsh but isn’t that always the way? Elias has at least always been good at listening to what he says and setting aside what he sounds like. And true to form, he doesn’t seem offended.

“Trauma can be isolating, Jon. I do hope you’ve got someone to lean on.”

There is no way, absolutely no way Elias can know about Sasha. No way this isn’t just an innocent, if slightly too unprofessional, inquiry into his employee’s health.

Still, when Jon answers “I do, thank you,” he can’t shake the sense that Elias knows exactly what he means.

~~~~~

“Boss!” Tim shouts as he crosses the threshold of the Archives, a huge smile on his face. Jon registers the five party poppers in his hand just in time to duck, and manages to miss the majority of the streamers.

He shakes himself and gives Tim a flat look, not that it does anything to cow the man, who just grins wider. Tim is still covered in bandages, but he looks far better than he had last time Jon had seen him – there’s colour back in his cheeks, and as deep as the bags under his eyes are, his stance is easier. It’s good.

“Welcome back, Jon!” Martin calls from the kitchenette, popping his head out and smiling widely. Against his will, Jon finds himself smiling at the man. Absence really does seem to make the heart grow fonder.

Speaking of absence…the feeling of being watched has returned. As soon as he walked into the Archives proper, if he’s any judge. Faint now, just a tickle, but it’s there.

Stupid, really, to have hoped it would be gone. Childish, to have to choke down sickening disappointment. He twists his fingers into his jumper, squeezes rhythmically to keep the dread at bay as he walks to his office.

Everything is…as it had been. The worm corpses gone, the floors and walls repaired. No more gaping hole pouring a liquid tide of wiggling white. For a moment he finds himself transfixed by the _wholeness_ of it, the normality of now juxtaposed horribly with what he knows was there.

“Knock knock,” someone says behind him, and he turns to find Sasha standing in the doorway. Seeing her, whole and unharmed and smiling that quiet smile, it helps. The ache recedes, and he can breathe past it.

“You got some party popper guts in your hair,” she tells him, and gently fishes them out. The touch sends the usual sharp prickles radiating outwards, but he can’t honestly say he minds too much. Not when it comes to Sasha.

Why she’s so often an exception to his well-maintained bubble of space, he can’t say. Georgie had been like that too, as had Ryan, the one friend he’d managed to sustain through high school, and his grandmother. Maybe it’s trust, the knowledge that this is a boundary understood and negotiated around. They’ve discussed it, the places Jon is happy to have her hands on him and the places he can’t have anyone touch. Sasha will never push him where he doesn’t want to go.

Sasha narrows her eyes at him. “You look kind of peaky. Sure you’re ready to come back?”

God knows, he’s always appreciated her bluntness. “I’m fine, thank you _very_ much,” he shoots back. Then with a vulnerability he can never quite keep from her, “I didn’t sleep very well last night. Strange dreams.”

She smiles a little. “I know that feeling. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” he tells her, warmed despite himself. Some of it is fluster – being like this in the Archives feels different to the sanctuary of their flats and even the times they’ve gone out together, on things that were probably dates. Illicit, somehow shameful.

Between everything happening with Michael and their research into the Keays and Gertrude Robinson, they’ve managed to avoid talking about several things concerning their relationship. Most prominently, the fact that Jon is very much still Sasha’s boss, and, killer worms and whatever the Eye is notwithstanding, this is very much still a workplace. He knows Sasha doesn’t even notice the potential power imbalance, but suspects she’s feeling awkward about telling Tim and Martin. Why, he’s not sure, but he is sure she would have brought it up otherwise. For himself, both aspects make him uncomfortable.

Not uncomfortable enough to stop seeing her, of course.

“So,” Jon says, moving to perch on the edge of his desk, take a bit of pressure of his leg. He redirects his mind to the more serious problem in his life, relishing the familiar tunnel-vision sharpening of his focus. “Did you find it?”

Sasha snorts, leaning on the desk beside him and fishing a large, old-fashioned metal key out her pocket. “Course I did. His desk drawer wasn’t even locked.”

“Cocky,” Jon murmurs, and Sasha grins.

“Exactly. So, are we doing this tonight?”

“I don’t see a reason to delay, do you? We’ve stockpiled more than enough supplies – oh come on,” he interjects at her sceptical look, “there is no way we need that much bottled water.”

“Better safe than sorry,” Sasha points out. “I get dehydrated easily.”

“Oh, is that why you have that garish water bottle?”

“It’s _pastel pink_ , Jon, it is literally impossible for a pastel to be garish”” Her smile is a lovely contrast to the sharpness of her tone – for a moment, the pressure of the eyes, the Eye, on the back of his neck is…not gone. Never gone, here, but entirely irrelevant. A snatched second of peace.

Then the walls close back in again.

“Alright,” he says, pushing himself off the desk and ignoring the twinge in his leg. “First day back, I should probably go over some things with everyone.”

Sasha nods, pocketing the key again, and together they walk back out into the Archives.

~~~~~

It takes ages to clear the place – Tim may have left ridiculously early but Martin insists on sticking around for hours, under the pretence of fussing over various bits of busywork. As if it isn’t obvious that most of his attention is going to fussing over Jon.

Surprisingly, Jon can’t say he minds it, overmuch. Martin is…probably not as bad as he’d first thought, considering his stellar performance during what his assistants have dubbed Wormageddon. And…it’s nice. To have people willing to fuss. A wonder that he hasn’t managed to drive them all away yet, and as long as that miracle continues he may as well enjoy it.

This state of affairs lasts until Martin starts yawning. As soon as she catches that, Sasha physically chases him out, muttering about idiots who ignore their bodily needs just to make her life harder. Jon smiles to himself as he listens to them argue their way up the stairs.

When Sasha comes back, they order a takeaway and eat quickly. The whole time, Jon can’t keep his eyes from straying to the corridor outside their little break room, where the trap door waits.

Since he was tossed unceremoniously out of the ghost of Pinhole Books by an enraged monster, Gertrude Robinson has loomed large in Jon’s mind. Even after finding out she’d been shot to death, he hadn’t quite been able to shake off his first impression of her – at best, an absent-minded professor type, at worst, a negligent, doddering fool. But seeing her handwriting on that note, addressed to Gerard Keay and sitting above something that was very obviously a Leitner…well. He can’t now deny that Gertrude Robinson was a part of this nightmare world he finds himself moving through. That being a part of that world almost certainly killed her.

She’d known about the tunnels, kept an office down there from what Martin had told him. Maybe she’d kept several offices. Maybe there’s a box of cassette tapes waiting in some hidden room, his name written in that slanted cursive on the side.

They’ve exhausted so many other leads. If there’s even a chance there’s something of use down there, they have to take it.

That and, as Sasha had pointed out, knowing a bit more about the secret network of tunnels under their feet can’t be anything but a good thing.

Finally, they finish their food, and Sasha finishes fussing with the backpacks they’re taking down, and they can’t put it off any longer. Jon expects the trapdoor to creak open when Sasha unlocks it, ominous as Michael’s door, but it opens easily, quietly. Like it’s been waiting for them. A waft of cool air sighs upwards, dusty and stale like a room unentered for years, and Sasha bites her lip.

“Are you alright?” he asks her, and winces as her realises how easily that could have come off as patronising. But Sasha just studies him for a second, then nods slowly.

“Lets do this,” she says, and takes the first steps down into the tunnels. Jon takes a deep breath, and follows her.

The thing about working on the lower ground level, Jon reflects, is that you think you’re working _underground_. He’s become used to Tim’s occasional basement shut-in jokes, used to not seeing natural light for his entire work-day, used to recycled air and feeling the subtle weight of being a floor under street level leave him at the end of the day. Now, of course, he realises he was wrong. The Archives aren’t underground, not really. Not like this.

The darkness beyond their puddles of torchlight is absolute, total. The silence is like a physical weight, pressing onto his ears, amplifying their breathing and footsteps. The air is cool, a very specific coolness; the temperature of air that has never been warmed by sunlight, or been moved by the heat of a human body. “Dead air,” he murmurs to himself.

Sasha flinches a little, and glares at him. “Did you have to put it like that?” All at once, he realises her hands are shaking, just a bit, her eyes a little too wide.

 _Are you alright?_ he wants to ask again, but from experience he knows that’s a stupid question right now. And knowing Sasha, she’s unlikely to agree to them going back. He’s useless in these situations, he knows he is; all he can think to do is take her hand. It’s helped her before, helped them both.

He half expects Sasha to glare at him and stalk off – that’s what he would do. But instead she grips his hand tightly in hers. For a moment, they stand together, clutching each other, before they start onwards again. When they reach the end of the tunnel and the branch of a new one, Sasha digs her stick of chalk out of her pocket and marks their way, as they agreed.

As they walk, echoes of their footsteps rippling off into the silent dark, Jon lets his torch play over the walls. They vary in a way he hadn’t expected, some areas obviously man-made and some as natural as any cave. Height and width vary as well. They can walk side by side through most corridors, but more than once they have to switch to single file, connected by only their hands. Some ceilings are so low that Sasha has to stoop a little; others arch up into the darkness, so high they send a nervous, vertiginous thrill through him. For some reason, the word _organic_ drifts into Jon’s mind. Like London above them, the tunnels they pass through don’t feel as if they’ve been constructed with any plan or design in mind; as if they just _happened_ one day.

“Jon,” Sasha says, breaking into his musings, and he follows the beam of her torch to an ancient-looking door set into the wall on her side. Immediately his heartbeat kicks up, visions of seething worms and gaping corpses rising unstoppably in his mind. Behind them, though, there’s that now-familiar aching hunger to _know_ , no matter how horrible the knowledge. He glances at Sasha and she nods, face grey in the torchlight.

Sasha backs up, drawing the big kitchen knife she’d brought from her home, and Jon reaches out, heart in his throat, to curl shaking fingers around the cool metal of the doorknob. He twists, and pulls, and it comes away from the wall with a long drawn-out squeal to reveal –

Nothing. Just the same rough grey stone as the rest of the wall, only the slightest indentation for the door to sit in.

“Shit,” Sasha gasps, collapsing back into the wall. “Jesus _Christ_ , what an anti-climax.” Jon’s breath leaves him just as explosively, and he claps a hand to his mouth to stifle hysterical laughter.

“We are both far too jumpy for this,” he mutters, and Sasha snorts in agreement.

“We’re really terrible horror movie protagonists. I’m hoping that means we both survive.”

“I thought the black person always died first?” Jon replies, and she mock-gasps and playfully smacks his arm.

“Piss off, just because they’d never cast a brown guy.”

Sheer stupid relief takes the edge off the fear, and after that the tunnels don’t seem quite so awful. There are more doors, but the ones that open when they try them are just that – doors, set into the wall for no discernible reason. Regardless, they keep walking, deeper and deeper, leaving chalk arrows at every turning.

The first door that opens into a room shocks them deeply. As soon as he sees the gaping shadows behind it, Jon throws himself back into the far wall, and Sasha lets out a little shriek that chills his blood. When nothing horrible emerges, Jon recovers enough to shine his torch inside.

The room is empty. Just a simple, rough-hewn stone space, small and low-ceilinged. At first Jon thinks there’s nothing at all there – he even checks the ceiling, at Sasha’s insistence. But just as he’s pulling back to close the door, the beam of the torch glints off something on the floor. He leans down to study it further, and Sasha moves closer to peer over his shoulder.

It’s a tiny scrap of metallised film, like the inside of a chocolate bar wrapper. Jon bends down to pick it up, and shows it to Sasha, who blinks, startled. She takes it from him and turns it over to show a scrap of purple label, the end of a familiar curled _k_.

“Who the hell was eating a Dairy Milk bar in the creepy tunnels?” she asks incredulously.

“One of the clean-up crew?” Jon suggests. “Or one of the police officers passing through here?” Sasha hums in agreement, but she puts the plastic carefully in her pocket before following him out of the room.

~~~~~

After they’ve been down there for twenty-five minutes, according to their watches, they stumble into the first of what Sasha refers to as the worm tunnels. The shrivelled bodies are at first lightly scattered on the stone floor, but their numbers soon increase until every step crunches slightly. Jon is grateful he’d thought to wear his old walking boots.

He’s also grateful that Sasha has taken his hand again, as every so often the movement of the torchlight will cast strange shadows over the little heaps, and he’ll suddenly be certain he can see movement among them. None of them actually do move, but the effect is deeply disconcerting.

When Sasha pulls on their joined hands to get his attention, his heartbeat kicks up, expecting the worst. But she just gestures to what looks like another room, this one with no door to cover it. He moves round her to get a look inside, and lets out a soft gasp when he sees inside.

Christ, but he’d been convinced Tim had hallucinated that part of his statement. Apparently not.

If he’d thought there were a lot of worms in the tunnels, it’s as nothing to here. The entire floor is carpeted in them, twisted dried bodies piled on top of each other. The earthy rotten smell, weaker and more diffused in the tunnels proper but much stronger here, makes him gag slightly.

“So this is what Tim was talking about,” Sasha murmurs, gesturing with her torch to the wall. There’s still a few worms attached to it, dead as the others but somehow embedded in the stone. Enough remain to show the shape of the huge circle they’d formed in life.

Sasha seems transfixed by it, stepping closer, pushing through the dead worms. As he follows her, Jon notices what she’s seeing; the inside of the circle is _wrong._ Everywhere else the stone making up the walls is slightly rough, implying that whoever created it didn’t have time to waste on sanding it all down. But this stone is smooth, enough to gleam in the torchlight, and in that gleam he can see twisting, warped patterns flowing through it.

“It looks as if it’s melted,” he says, almost to himself, and before he can think about it too much he reaches his hand up to touch it.

It does feel smooth, but that’s not what makes him so anxious to pull his hand away. The stone is somehow _soft_ beneath his fingers, and he has the horrible thought that he could press into it, push right through to find something on the other side. But no, it’s stable, it must be.

“Let’s get out of here,” he mutters, and Sasha nods her agreement. When he looks at her, though, she’s studying something on the other side of the room. Following her gaze, he notices another pathway, pushed through the worm corpses up to the melted wall.

“Maybe it was Tim,” she suggests, glancing over at him as if to get his support. “Or one of the cops exploring?”

“Maybe,” he replies, and feels a small, sick twist of fear at the knowledge that he doesn’t believe himself.

~~~~~

Once they’ve left the worm room, it doesn’t take long before they pass the rest of the worm corpses and into empty corridors. They sprawl out into the distance, further than Jon can quite comprehend – they must run under most of Chelsea, maybe even further. There are no straight lines here – passages turn and lean and bend until their little white arrows seem such scant protection against the threat of being lost down here. He finds himself thankful he’d listened to Sasha and they’d packed extra batteries, food and water. Just in case.

The stairs loom suddenly out of the darkness, spiralling stone leading down beyond the soft glow of their torches. He exchanges a glance with Sasha, her eyes wide and glittering.

“We really, _really_ shouldn’t,” she says. “If we were going to find anything on Gertrude, we would have found it up here, where her body was. Even if there’s no horrible monster down there, no-one knows we’re here – what if there’s an accident? Those can’t be well-maintained, and if one of us breaks a leg…” She trails off, and he notices that all the time she’s been talking, her eyes have been fixed on the stairwell.

“You still want to go down there,” he states, and she glares at him.

“Don’t you?”

Jon doesn’t say yes. But then again, Sasha’s always been far better at reading people than he could ever be – what’s a hard-earned skill for him is automatic and instinctive for her – so he doubts he needs to.

They descend slowly, Sasha going first on the basis that she has a knife and a working knowledge of self-defence, and Jon bringing up the rear. The stairs spin down into the darkness, on and on, each level branching off to reveal more corridors stretching away. Like a maze, Jon thinks, faintly dizzy, if a maze created itself, organically. Growing like some strange stone-and-brick fungus under the streets of London.

When they reach the fourth level, Sasha’s gasp yanks him out of whatever stupor the spiralling pattern had put him in. She’s pointing off into the tunnel in front of them.

“I saw something!” she hisses. “Swear to God, Jon, I just saw something _move_!”

Skin buzzing, Jon follows her as she ducks out of the stairwell and onto the fourth level. She charges off before him, and by the time he catches up with her in a fork of the corridor, she’s standing still, flicking her torch over the bare brick walls and glaring.

“I saw something,” she repeats. “Something is down here”

“I believe you,” he says, and points to what had caught his eye as he’d jogged along the corridor to her.

A wine bottle, rolled into an indentation left by a missing brick. When he bends to pull it carefully out, he sees that most of the label has rotted away, but the year is still visible as 2003.

“Wine-drinking monsters,” Sasha murmurs.

“Monsters with class,” he says, more to see her smile than anything else.

Without having to discuss it, they continue down the corridor. The passages here are more starkly different, neat brickwork melting into rough stone and back again. The construction is fascinating, almost lovely, if he suspends the quiet dread it brings.

Then, as he lets his torch skip ahead of him in the passage, he pulls up short.

The corridor in front of them is gone.

Just…gone, entirely not there anymore, replaced by a solid wall of stone. He yanks on Sasha’s arm hard enough to pull her off balance, and she gasps when she sees the wall in front of them, solid and immutable and most definitely not there a second ago.

“Shit,” Sasha hisses under her breath, pressing closer to him, and he turns to see the passage has shrunk, the wall moved undeniably closer. Jon tries to take a step back but his shoulders hit the opposite wall with a horribly final _thunk._ Sasha clutches his arm, uncomfortably tight in a way he would have flinched at any other time – but now, his terror is as stark and powerful as hers, crushing his chest as the tunnel closes in around them.

For a moment, all is still. Then out of the darkness comes a single word, as cold and unforgiving as the stone surrounding them.

“Leave.”

Hurriedly, tripping over themselves and each other, they back up. Sasha is behind him, thank God, _thank God_ , and all he can think through the panic is at least she has a better chance of getting to the stairs. By some miracle, they manage to squeeze out onto the landing, though Jon can feel the cold stone scraping at his heel as he pulls his foot loose. They flee upwards, footsteps pounding unnaturally loud in the silence, and practically run back along the pathways they’d marked.

Jon doesn’t know how long it takes them to navigate back to the trapdoor; it’s a blur of jagged breaths and sickening fear, the sight of Sasha in front of him the only thing keeping him at all sane. Finally, _finally_ , they reach the trap door, stumbling up the stairs and piling out of it, falling practically on top of each other in their haste. As soon as he’s free, Jon pivots and slams the door firmly shut. Sasha’s already darting into the Archives, and comes back dragging a box heavy with files. Together, they heave it over the trapdoor and let it go with a comfortingly solid _thud_.

For a second, Jon and Sasha stand in silence, staring down at the motionless trap door. Once it’s clear that nothing followed them up, his stare redirects to Sasha. She’s standing over the trapdoor, chest heaving, sweat beading on her brow and the little hairs curling around her forehead, and all his panic-adled brain can think is _beautiful, my God, we’re alive and she’s so beautiful_.

He can’t not kiss her, in that wonderful moment where his brain has finally realised that they’re safe again. They’ve done this often enough now that he knows the warmth of her mouth intimately, the particular feeling of her hands curving around his back and pulling him close. Sasha sighs against his lips as he presses her up against the nearest wall, suddenly desperate to get as close to her as possible, press the whole length of him to the whole length of her until he can feel her heartbeat in his own chest.

Christ, and everyone calls him _reserved_. Evidently he should be in fear of his life more often.

When the panic has died enough that he can bear to have even a little space between them, he pulls back as far as Sasha will let him. Not that far, as it turns out; he has to lean down and rest his suddenly heavy head on her clavicle.

“That was so, _so_ stupid,” Sasha breathes, and then buries her face in his hair as she laughs. Helplessly, he laughs with her, leg aching and every breath scraping his throat.

“Well,” he points out, when he’s regained a bit more control, “at least we know a bit more about the tunnels beneath us now.”

“Yeah, we know they’re full of dead worms, and sometimes they _move_ ,” she grumbles, and he presses his grin into her shoulder.

As far as he can remember, the plan had been to regroup back at his, but they’re both too tired to bother to even climb the stairs out of the Archives. Thankfully, the cot in Document Storage is big enough for two if they squeeze, which Jon has no issues with right now. He ends up curled with his back pressed firmly against Sasha’s front, her arm wonderfully tight around his chest and her breath sighing distractingly against his hair.

Normally, it takes him far longer to get to sleep, especially given the dreams that tend to wait for him in the darkness behind his eyelids. But apparently exhaustion and the lovely warmth of Sasha’s body are effective enough tranquillisers that he’s out within minutes.

The last thing he manages to think before sleep claims him, is that he hadn’t felt the gaze of whatever haunts the Archives on his back down in the tunnels, not once. Now they’re out, of course, it’s very definitely back.

As much as it will horrify him when he wakes, his foggy mind finds that heavy, inhuman gaze almost…comforting.

~~~~~

There is a moment in the night where he wakes. Or at least, he thinks he does.

At first he’s unsure of why he’s awake. The Archives are still dark, Sasha is still breathing deep and slow behind him. Then he hears it again, the faintest rustling noise, off down the corridor. A squeaking footstep on the dodgy floorboard in his office.

He goes to push himself up, eyes half-blind with sleep and without his glasses, before a cool, slim-fingered hand presses him back down.

“Sleep, Jon,” Elias says above him. “Everything’s fine.”

And everything is fine. Elias isn’t a threat, Elias is safe. He can go back to sleep.

He does, closing his eyes as Elias walks away, back towards his office. The faintest unease begins to rise in his stomach, but before it can blossom his dreams drag him back into darkness.


	3. three

Sasha will drink tea if it’s offered to her, but Jon has discovered she’s preferentially a coffee drinker. For himself, Jon won’t have the stuff in his flat; he mostly doesn’t mind the smell, but the taste is horrible, bitter enough to leave him gagging. Since learning this, he’s been subtly trying to make sure they end up overnighting in Sasha’s flat more often, so she’ll have coffee in the morning. That didn’t work out this time, mostly because they’d both been exhausted and Jon’s flat had been closer, but he’s got a Starbucks down the road from him, so he’s sure Sasha will survive.

Pathetically, he’s grateful they’d ended up at his. With the state he’s in right now, he really needs familiar surroundings.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting here, curled into himself at the dining room table. His eyes burn and itch, his gut churns, and his mind is running wild with thoughts so sharp-edged he fancies he can feel them slicing at his brain.

Every time his eyes drift shut, the familiar, fear-twisted faces of the statement-givers in his dreams stare back at him. Every time he shifts in the chair, the phantom pressure of a hand on his sternum sends him shuddering, sinking teeth into his lip to ground himself.

The nightmares are one thing, and as horrible as they are, they’re a familiar horror now. But Elias…

Was it real? Could it have been real? Why the hell would Elias have been down in the Archives, in his office, at night?

How many times has he been down there?

Jon and Sasha have not been keeping any notes on their investigations in their Archives, a fact for which he is deeply thankful. So Elias couldn’t have found anything incriminating – assuming it was Elias, and not a figment of Jon’s half-dreaming mind, born of leftover terror and the awful, buzzing paranoia that’s been building for most of a year now. Ever since he found himself in the Archives, under the eye of whatever endlessly staring _thing_ dwells there. The same paranoia that’s now insisting it _was_ Elias who came into his Archives that night to spy on him. That it was probably Elias who killed Gertrude Robinson.

He hasn’t see the man in the week since he and Sasha went into the tunnels. Not unusual, Elias has plenty of administrative business to attend to, but he’s grateful nonetheless. He’s never been a good liar, and he dreads to think how he’d react if confronted by the man.

The squeak of the bedroom door opening slices through the silent room, sending a pulse of _bad_ through Jon’s chest, and he presses his arms tight to his sternum. He tries desperately to compose his face from a blank rictus of stress, and really can’t tell if he succeeds or not.

Thankfully, Sasha seems too distracted to notice. Unsurprising, really; it’s five in the morning, and she has the dazed look that she always gets after what she calls her Michael dreams. They come maybe one a week, and she always wakes up disorientated and bleeding – never much worse than a bad paper-cut, but seeing the little trails of blood leading from cuts she shouldn’t even _have_ never fails to scare him.

Speaking of…“You’ve got – “ he gestures to the little line of dried blood on her face, seeped from a barely visible slice on her cheekbone.

Sasha reaches up, and sighs when she feels the blood trail. “Crap, I forgot about that. Sorry if I got any on your pillow.”

“It’s fine,” he says woodenly, then, just to make sure, “was it another Michael dream?”

“Yep.” She wanders over to the kitchen sink and runs the tap, washing the dried blood off her face. “We were in…I don’t know quite where, a big country garden or something. It kept trying to get me to go in the maze, got really petulant when I said no. I did point out it could bring the maze to me anytime, but apparently that’s not as fun.”

“Oh,” Jon says intelligently. Which is at least an improvement on what he wants to say. The casual way Sasha talks about the malicious, knife-handed monster that warps her dreams, like it’s a friend that stopped by for lunch the other day, like it hadn’t just made her bleed –

When he’s sure he’s not going to blurt something she won’t like, he asks, “Did it tell you anything interesting?”

“Just a bit more about itself,” she replies, filling up the kettle to make her own cup of tea. “Called itself the Distortion. Apparently it’s something to do with fear of insanity – your insanity, I mean, not someone else’s. Fear that what you’re seeing or feeling isn’t real, that your mind is playing tricks on you. Things that can’t be possible, so the only explanation is you’ve gone crazy.” The slightly-too-loud clattering of crockery as she fishes a mug out his cupboard sends little shock-waves through him, and he fights back hisses of pain.

“It’s got a thing for mazes, definitely,” Sasha continues. “The whole ‘disorientation, Escher architecture, getting lost and wandering round in circles’ thing. Maybe all those folk tales about creatures that lure you off the path and get you lost somewhere you thought you knew…” She trails off, and after a few moments of silence Jon raises his head from his hands – when had he lowered it into them? – to see her standing in front of him, familiar crease between her brows.

“You okay?” she asks, voice blessedly soft. Jon feels a strange flash of something like anger – what is he meant to say to that? Why can’t she just leave him to his weakness in peace? It passes quickly, and leaves him ashamed, even more drained.

“Just a nightmare,” he tells her, knowing she won’t be convinced. “That’s all.”

“Really?” she says, scepticism etched deep into her voice. “Cause you look like a strong breeze would shatter you.”

“It was a particularly bad nightmare?” he offers.

Sasha nods slowly, curling into the chair next to his. “Tell me about it?”

He holds out for a minute, under her tired, kind gaze, until something in him breaks and he relents. “It’s the statements, specifically the ones I take directly from subjects. I dream about them. I dream that they’re, they’re suffering, Melanie King and Dr Elliot and Ms Hearne, they suffer and I just…watch. I stand there and watch, I can’t move, I can’t do anything to help them no matter how they beg. I’m just the witness to their pain and trauma;” he laughs a little, feels it come out bitter and sharp, “I’m just the Archivist.”

“That sounds disturbing,” Sasha says after a moment, with a little twist of a smile that he’s fairly certain is some gesture of solidarity.

His answering smile is a weak effort. “It really, really is.”

She takes one hand off her mug of tea and lays it on the table beside him. He considers, then takes it gratefully. At some point, Sasha has figured out that gentle, rhythmically squeezing his hand while holding it soothes him, and she’s been taking shameless advantage ever since.

“It’s fine,” he says, finally – not quite what he means, but it will have to do. Sasha bites her lip but she doesn’t reply, and he’s grateful for that as well. Just keeps holding his hand, sending waves of gentle pressure over his skin, as he tries to rebuild himself enough to face the rest of his life.

~~~~~

“As far as I know,” Basira Hussain says pensively, “neither of us have even had a chance to actually start listening to the tapes.”

And that, right there, is about as good an opening as he could ask for. “Interesting,” he murmurs, and then “listen…” as he reaches to click off the tape recorder. PC Hussain’s eyes follow the movement, her face clear of any emotion he can identify.

“If you’re not getting the time and resources you need to go over the tapes yourself,” he starts, carefully casual, “my team and I are happy to help.”

An eyebrow quirk. “You’re really offering to go through all that information for free?”

“It’s practically my job anyway,” he says, with a little laugh that he hopes doesn’t sound too nervous.

She sits back in her chair slowly, tapping a finger against her chin. “You get that you’re asking me to smuggle evidence out of police custody, right? Cause that’s what this would be, there’s no way anyone is approving handing out evidence in _this_ murder investigation to independent analysts, especially not when they work for Spook Central.”

“Do people really call us that?” he asks, unable to keep the offence out of his voice.

“Sometimes, yeah,” she replies, shrugging. “I don’t know if it’s worth the risk.”

Jon has a realistic understanding of how he presents to people at the best of times, and this is certainly not the best of times. He won’t be any good at persuading PC Hussain to hand over evidence for a murder investigation, not at this level of sleep deprivation and quietly gnawing paranoia. Sasha, on the other hand, comes off as calm, professional, competent. Much more persuasive.

When he calls her in, PC Hussain’s eyebrows hit her hijab, but she doesn’t say anything. Her dark eyes are quiet, watchful.

“This is Sasha James,” he introduces, feeling suddenly awkward about identifying her as his assistant. Since Prentiss’ attack, he’s been unable to think of her as anything but his partner. “She’s working with me, following a few leads connected to some of the statements we’ve received.”

“Anything connected to Gertrude Robinson?” Hussain asks.

“Actually,” Sasha puts in, “yes.” Jon glances at her sharply but she ignores him, leaning against his desk to meet PC Hussain’s uncompromising gaze. “We think she knew a family called the Keays, who pop up in our statements quite a lot as connected to paranormal events.”

Apart from a little twitch at the word _paranormal_ , PC Hussain’s face doesn’t give anything away. “Do you think they were connected to her death?”

“Not directly – both Mary and Gerard Keay are dead,” Sasha replies. “But an indirect connection is possible. They were both involved in some pretty dark stuff.”

“Black magic?” PC Hussain mutters under her breath, then bites her lip. Sasha snorts with laughter.

“Something like that,” she says. “We don’t have anything concrete yet, or we’d bring it to your lot.” Almost certainly a lie, but Jon is hardly going to contradict her.

PC Hussain rests her hand on her chin again – that might be something of a tell, but he doesn’t know her well enough to be sure. “That’s interesting.” She’s quiet for a minute, watching them both. She has an incredibly powerful gaze, something Jon somehow didn’t notice during the statement. Finally, she shrugs. “Alright, fine. God knows I could use the help. I’ll pass a few on, see if I can’t find some that reference the Keays. It won’t be many, or often; there’s only so much I can risk.”

“We absolutely understand,” Sasha puts in. “We just want to be as helpful as we can.” She really is a master of this sort of thing, Jon reflects, with the sort of possessive-edged pride he feels ashamed to admit to, in case it seems patronising.

PC Hussain leaves with another disclaimer that it might be a while until she’s able to provide a tape, but Jon doesn’t think he’s incorrect in assuming she’ll keep her word. Not that he can bring himself to totally sure of anyone, these days. Sasha is about it, as far as his trust goes.

Once she’s gone, he glances over at Sasha, still leaning against his desk. “Did you really have to tell her so much?” he mutters, hoping he doesn’t sound too irritated. He’s sure she had her reasons, only…it unsettles him, for reasons that might not be entirely rational.

Sasha meets his eyes without hesitation. “She’s not Tim or Martin, we can fob them off easily. This is an officer of the Met, and she’s used to dealing with crazy stuff. If we want her to trust us enough to give us anything usable, we need to be at least a _bit_ honest with her.”

Jon scoffs a little, just on the principle of the thing, but she’s probably right. And he can admit that at this moment, his thought processes aren’t the most…clear.

Leaning over the desk, Sasha holds his gaze. “Trust me, okay?”

He sighs, forcing his misgivings out of his lungs with the carbon dioxide. “Of course.”

~~~~~

PC Hussain keeps them waiting, but she does deliver. Not to them directly, for safety concerns apparently, but the Archives receive an anonymous package containing a cassette tape labelled M.K. An attached note reads _M.K. = Mary Keay? Long shot, I know, but it’s the best I could find. Keep it quiet._

Jon is itching to know what’s on the tape the moment he slides it out of the bubble-wrapped envelope, but Sasha puts her foot down. “We’ll be better able to analyse it away from the Archives, you know that. Wait till we get to yours.” Thankfully they got the tape at the end of the working day, or he’d have had to write off a whole day. As it is, he’s jittery and unfocused for the entire tube journey, and the low-level unpleasantness of the tube at rush hour scrapes at him, until holding Sasha’s hand is the only thing stopping him from shaking apart.

As soon as they have their coats off, Jon has the tape recorder out of his satchel and Sasha has her notepad in hand, pen uncapped and poised over the paper. When Jon clicks the tape into place in the player, his eyes lock with Sasha. Hers are bright, fevered, a look now familiar to him. As ridiculous as the timing is, he suddenly wants to tell her that she’s beautiful.

“Ready?” he asks, and when she nods, he presses the play button.

In the years that his time at the Institute had crossed with Gertrude’s, Jon had only spoken to her a couple of times. He can’t remember her voice, not really, but the clipped, cultured tones coming out of the recorder send a shock of recognition through him. There’s another voice on the tape, one he doesn’t recognise at all. A soft, slightly sing-song female voice, that for some reason sends cold electricity dancing over his skin. When Gertrude identifies her as Mary Keay, he’s not one bit surprised.

“Jackpot,” Sasha murmurs, and he shares the delight fizzing in her voice. In his wildest hopes, he never imagined PC Hussain would actually find them a statement from _Mary fucking Keay_.

The delight doesn’t last. There’s so _much_ in this statement – not just the horrors that Mary Keay is describing; frankly, at this point, he’s heard worse. The Leitner is as disturbing as they ever are, but it isn’t what leaves him shaking, just a little, with an emotion he can’t quite name.

_They don’t know what this place is. You do, though, don’t you?_

_...slavish devotion to you and your patron._

_I should really tell Elias about this._

_He’s not exactly big on action though, is he?_

“Well,” Sasha says when the tape ends, bright and brittle. “There’s a lot to unpack there, but let’s just throw away the whole suitcase.”

“That’s a meme, isn’t it?” Jon mutters absent-mindedly, attention far away. _They don’t know what this place is_.

“I guess it does explain Mary Keay’s ghost,” she murmurs – her voice seems strangely echoey to him, as if she’s speaking from far away. “And the skin thing you saw. And the books she mentions corroborate Dominic Swain’s statement. Ever heard of ‘the End’?” The last question seems louder somehow, and it jolts him out of his haze.

“What? No, I don’t think so, why?”

“Just…the way she said it, it reminds me of how Michael said ‘the Eye’. Like it’s a name for something.” She’s silent for…a length of time, he’s not really in a mindset to judge that sort of thing, before she prompts “Jon, are you with me?”

“Elias knows,” he blurts. His fists are clenching again, the rhythmic bite of his nails into his palms the only thing stopping him from _screaming_. “There’s something wrong with the Institute, something very wrong, you heard her - _they don’t know what this place is_ – and there is something _wrong_ with Elias. He knew about Mary, obviously, and never mentioned it; even though he knew we were investigating the Keays in relation to some of the statements, he never once mentioned her connection to Gertrude, to the Leitners, _any_ of it. And he’s –“ He cuts himself off, presses his fist against his mouth. Goddammit, he hadn’t intended to tell Sasha about that encounter, the one he might have dreamed, the one he’s now increasingly sure he did _not_ dream.

“He’s what, Jon?” That same look she’d given him over his table a week ago, no expectations or judgement. He’s so weak for that look.

“He was in the Archives, the night we slept there, after the, the tunnels. I woke up when I heard him in my office, and then he…” Jon trails off, groping for words that don’t sound utterly ridiculous. “He told me to go back to sleep, and I…did.”

“Just like that?” Sasha asks, and he bristles.

“Yes, just like that. Don’t – I don’t understand why, but that’s what happened.”

“No, I believe you.” There’s something strange in Sasha’s expression, something he doesn’t quite recognise. He thinks it might be anger. “So Elias is poking around, then. I wonder how he knows he has something to poke around for?”

 _Martin_ , something in Jon’s mind whispers, _Tim_. _You’ve been betrayed_. He tells the whispering to shut up, but it’s more persuasive than he’d like to admit. “Who knows? Maybe he’s got cameras in the Archives he hasn’t told us about?”

“Maybe he’s just watching us all more closely, after Wormageddon?” Sasha points out. “If he’s been keeping information about the supernatural from us, he’d be getting more careful now we know for sure what’s out there.”

“ _Do_ we know for sure what’s out there?” Jon wonders aloud, almost idly. Something is tugging at the edge of his brain and he tries to focus on it. Something about Elias’s invasion of his office, the sound of him walking through it…

The creak of the loose board, the same loose board he’d heard on Gertrude’s tape.

“I know where Gertrude’s secret compartment is!” he exclaims, and Sasha blinks at him.

“That’s…a leap. You know, Jon, sometimes I have no idea how your brain works.”

“Well,” he says, feeling a smile stretch wide across his lips, because damn Elias and whatever mind games he’s playing, and damn whatever terrible thing the Institute is hiding – they’ll find it, no matter how long it takes. No matter how scared he is, how many nightmares it brings him. No matter that he’s started to see Basira’s terrified face alongside the others, as she runs through hot, blood-splattered rooms from a bloodied, broken corpse that won’t ever die. “That makes two of us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god, it feels like it's been a decade since i posted something. not 100% happy with this chapter, but fuck it. next instalment will have much, much more michael, i promise

**Author's Note:**

> i hc jon as autistic, and have tried to weave that in as much as possible. if there's anything i could do better, or different, or anything you think i could add, please lmk
> 
> this series is now the longest thing i've ever written! yay! 
> 
> [this series has a playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6gMCGcMgKXhJ1MmMKdqifp?si=6fnIrFz6TEa6lIcoHPrIhw)


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